Announcement of maintenance releases

Announcement of maintenance releases

Forum supervisor

2004/02/03 16:02

Dear Open CASCADE Users!

Since the beginning of the year 2003 OPEN CASCADE SA has been elaborating a new approach to delivering Open CASCADE libraries to the end users. This approach represents a system of regularly scheduled releases of stable certified versions of the Open CASCADE libraries. The releases are subdivided into major releases (numbered by major version X and minor version zero, i.e. X.0) gathering some large improvements and principal new features, and into minor releases (numbered by major version X and minor version Y, i.e. X.Y) gathering most recent debugging and improvements. In 2003 we delivered 5.0 major and 5.1 minor releases.

We believe that this new approach will bring you even more confidence in the stable future of Open CASCADE software, even better opportunities for forecasting and planning your development process, even faster modernization and improvement of your applications by smooth transition to newer versions.

As an additional benefit for our Support and Specific Development customers, OPEN CASCADE SA is happy to announce the system of regular maintenance releases. These intermediate releases are scheduled evenly in between consequent major and minor releases to supply our clients with the most up-to-date versions of Open CASCADE libraries containing hottest corrections of the customers problems, newest functionality implemented, recent performance improvements and so on.

These maintenance releases are aimed at the substitution of the former patch delivery service when every client worked in his own custom environment receiving just fixes of his own bugs, just his ordered improvements etc. With a maintenance release, every customer of Open CASCADE receives a single certified and stable version accumulating all debugging and improvements made for all Open CASCADE users worldwide.

Since the year 2004, maintenance releases will become the ultimate way to be up-to-date with the latest Open CASCADE technology. In order to gain access to this system it is necessary to be a Specific Development customer, or a customer of one of our A-la-carte Support packages. All our existing clients have already been using this system since 2003 and received maintenance releases 5.0.1 in June 2003, 5.0.2 in August 2003 and 5.1.1 in December 2003.

Open CASCADE whishes you a prosperous New Year 2004,
and welcomes you to join the club of our customers!

Stephane Routelous

2004/02/03 17:19

Hi,

If I understand correctly, the minor releases ( X.Y.Z ) will only be released to customers, not as OpenSource download ( without paying ).
I have no problem with that.

I think, because as you said in your message : "regularly scheduled releases of stable certified versions", it will be good to publish this release plan. It will help us, OpenSource developpers to know when the next version will be released.

Thanks,

Stephane

Patrik Müller

2004/02/04 07:49

Hi,

I agree. But a release plan (or even better an roadmap) should be. It also seems the bug states at the "org" site will not updated!!

Best regards,

Patrik

Forum supervisor

2004/02/05 07:31

Hello guys,

Thank you for your feedback.
We tentatively plan to issue maintenance releases (v. X.Y.Z.) every 2-3 months and minor versions - once per 6-10 months, i.e. to have about two or three maintenance releases in-between.
As far as the roadmap is concerned we are mainly driven by demands of our custom development projects as well as clients' requests. Certainly we also analyze potential market demands prior to make any investments. We are more in favor of announcing available features rather than pre-viewing our plans outside.

Nonetheless if you have any interesting ideas that would be valuable for a majority please always feel free to make your suggestions.